8 splendid plays that beg for an L.A. production ASAP

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Set us as preferred For those eager to keep up with the best in contemporary drama, I have good news: Great work is headed our way.The two best plays I saw last year, Bess Wohl’s “Liberation” and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Purpose,” back-to-back winners of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, are part of the Geffen Playhouse’s unmissable next season.And Center Theatre Group announced that “John Proctor Is the Villain,” Kimberly Belflower’s bewitching modern riposte to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible,” has a place at the Mark Taper Forum next spring.This season has featured several recent Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas, including Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “Fairview” (in a Rogue Machine Theatre production at the Matrix), Sanaz Toossi‘s “English” (at the Wallis) and Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust” (at the Mark Taper Forum).At a time when drama has come to depend on celebrity leads and commercial hype, this bounty of understated excellence is heartening.

But it’s also made me hungry for more.Always on the lookout for new plays, I’ve compiled a list of works that I’ve read for award consideration or seen elsewhere in the last year that deserve Los Angeles productions.

I recommend these scripts to artistic directors and literary managers still fighting the good fight.Smart, entertaining and surprising, they offer reassurance that adventurous playwriting is not only alive and well but branching out into uncharted territory.

Family strife is front and center in Harmon’s personal drama, a portrait of an artist as a young grandson.The grandmother in the spotlight, a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker named Renee, exposes Joshua to the joys of the Big City when he visits from the suburbs.

She’s like an Auntie Mame, only her version of extravagance is peanut butter sundaes at Serendipity 3, a course at the ...